StarWind The Most Recent Version

[anton (staff)]

StarWind 5.3 Release notes

New features and improvements
High Availability: File format checking added. It helps to eliminate the threat of data corruption due to the use of simple disk images as HA device image files.
Core: TCP/IP interface settings changes are recognized automatically now. When host obtains new IP address or has new network interface enabled StarWind service automatically opens port on the new interface.
Mirror: Background synchronization mode added. When device initialization mode has been set to synchronize for new mirror device new device becomes available immediately. Synchronization is done at the background. Synchronization progress is displayed in mirror device properties.
RAM disk: SerialId support for the drive added. No more pseudo-MPIO issues with VMware ESX/ESXi.
High Availability: Synchronization status icon added to Management Console for HA devices.
GUI: Help file has been updated.

Fixed bugs
High Availability: HA device node BSOD issue fixed. If HA device is under heavy load and one of HA nodes hard reset other matching node could crash with BSOD under certain circumstances.
High Availability: Issue with Hyper-V cluster fixed. If HA device is used for hosting Hyper-V virtual machine and is connected to cluster using Round-Robin policy virtual machine could become unstable or crash with BSOD after HA node hard reset and following fast sync process.
High Availability: Persistent reservation processing fixed.
Caching: Hyper-V virtual machine data corruption issue fixed. This issue appeared during installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 to Hyper-V virtual machine hosted on StarWind virtual disk with Write-Back cache enabled.
Caching: Aborted tasks issue when using Write-Back cache under heavy load. Request queue processing was fixed. Under certain patterns of disk load disk requests could be stalled in the queue for a while.
Mirror: Wrong mirrors status display fixed for Mirror devices with Write-Back mode caching enabled. After the mirror had failed its status was displayed as “valid” in Management Console for some period of time.

Installation notes
Note for ESX/ESXi users: Please be sure to install ESXi400-201003401-BG patch from VMWare. This patch fixes some iSCSI-related issues in VMWare ESX/ESXi.
Download link to ESX patch: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=1019492
Download link to ESXi patch:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=1019497

Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.

Warning: existing HA devices cannot be upgraded to this version without taking storage offline.
To update existing HA devices from previous version, please follow the steps below:
- take storage offline (disconnect both HA nodes from the client)
- create backups of data files and StarWind config file (starwind.cfg)
- update StarWind on the both HA nodes
- perform full synchronization for HA devices.

[Max (staff)]

StarWind 5.3.5 Release notes

Fixed bugs:
High Availability: Problem with moving cluster shared volumes between nodes in Hyper-V cluster was fixed.
IBV: VSS snapshots fixed. Core: Task reusing fixed. Service could crash while processing connection from certain hardware initiators.

Installation notes:
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.

Install: If you are upgrading from version 5.3, HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.

Warning: existing HA devices of version 5.2 and older versions cannot be upgraded to this version without taking storage offline. To update existing HA devices from previous version, please follow the steps below:
- Take storage offline (disconnect both HA nodes from the client).
- Create backups of data files and StarWind config file (starwind.cfg).
- Update StarWind on the both HA nodes.
- Perform full synchronization for HA devices.

[Constantin (staff)]

StarWind 5.4 Release Notes

New features and improvements:
High Availability: Caching added. Write-Through and Write-Back modes are supported.
High Availability: Autosync functionality added. When HA node becomes active, it is synchronized and binged online automatically if autosync option has been set.
IBVolume: Maximum device size limit of 2TB has been removed.
Core: allow responses to SendTargets=All to be greater than 8kb, up to initiator's parameter MaxRecvDataSegmentLength.
Installation: Allow rule for StarWind service is being added to Windows firewall on product install.

Installation notes:
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.

Install: If you are upgrading from version 5.3, HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.

[Constantin (staff)]

StarWind 5.4 build 2010/07/22 Release Notes

New features and improvements:
Licensing: New license types added. License format changed.

Installation notes:
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.

Install: If you are upgrading from version 5.3, HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.

[Constantin (staff)]

StarWind 5.5 Release notes

New features and improvements
High Availability: Added heartbeat feature for synchronization channel state tracking.
High Availability: Performance improvements.
High Availability: Fast sync support for devices with write-back cache mode added.
High Availability: If both nodes were down and then full sync has been initiated, device becomes available for client connections immediately. Requests are processed by the node which is selected as synchronization source.
High Availability: CHAP authentication support added.
CDP/Snapshots: GPT disks support fixed.
Virtual Tape: Image file changing fixed. Device properties information now shows correct image file name. If no Virtual Tape image file is currently loaded in the device, it reports the file name as "None - Virtual Tape device is not loaded", and the file size as zero.
GUI: Management Console updates.

Installation notes
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.
HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.

Warning: CHAP authentication is not supported for HA device images created in earlier versions of the software.

[Constantin (staff)]

Version 5.6 Release notes

New features and improvements
Event log: Event log added. Select Server node and switch to "Events" tab to view server event records.
Event notifications: Event notifications feature added. StarWind can send event notifications by e-mail, add event records to Windows Event Log, and write messages to text files. Event notifications can be configured on the server "Configuration" tab.
Core: Log rotate functionality added.
CDP/Thin provisioning: data corruption on EXT3/EXT4 file systems issue fixed. When thin provisioned or snapshotted device has been used for storing Linux EXT3/EXT4 file systems, data corruption could occur.
GUI: Save server password feature added.
GUI: Open dialog now displays total disk space and free disk space.
GUI: Management Console updates and optimizations.
Deduplication: experimental feature "Deduplication device type" added. Deduplication device implements low-level data deduplication. It allows to save disk space significantly when user data contains several copies of similar data.
Deduplication device is in testing stage, use it on your own risk!

Installation notes
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.
HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.

Warning: CHAP authentication is not supported for HA device images created in 5.4 and versions of the software.

[Constantin (staff)]

Version 5.7 Release Notes

New features and improvements
High Availability: Added asynchronous device operation mode. Speed optimization.
High availability: added option to set traffic priority on sync channel during device synchronization. Device synchronization process can generate high load to disk system and partner. It affects performance of client requests processing. Now you can set priority for device synchronization traffic. Select “Sync channel priorities” option in HA device context menu.
High availability: added option to set several sessions inside sync channel. Using several sessions can speed up synchronization on fast (10GBe) connections.
Deduplication: new version of experimental deduplication plugin. Added ability to set deduplication block size (512 bytes - 256kB). Deduplication device implements low-level data deduplication. It allows saving disk space significantly when user data contains several copies of similar data.
Deduplication: Metadata caching has been made optional. Can be turned off when fast SSD drive is used for storing metadata. Data deletion support added.
Deduplication: Added option for setting deduplicated cache size.
Snapshots/CDP: Snapshot manager feature added. It allows viewing, deleting and merging exiting snapshots with convenient and simple GUI. Select “Snapshot manager” option in context menu of device with snapshots support.
Snapshots/CDP: issue with large (>2TB) cached devices fixed. When thin provisioned or snapshotted device has size greater than 2TB and uses write-back or write-through cache, data corruption could occur.
Performance monitor feature added. From StarWind management console you can monitor disk transfer rates, average number of I/O operations on targets, CPU and memory load on StarWind server.
Event log: Notifications about new records in StarWind event log in system tray.
GUI: Targets and servers can be arranged in groups.
GUI: several small tweaks and fixes.
ImageFile, DiskBridge: added support of the Mode Sense page 0x3 for compatibility with Solaris iSCSI initiator.
Core: fixed LUN Reset command processing.

Installation notes
Install: Previous versions can be updated by installing this version over existing installation.
HA devices can be upgraded without taking storage offline:
- Update StarWind on the first HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices. Wait for synchronization process to be finished.
- Update StarWind on the second HA node.
- Perform synchronization for HA devices.


The latest build is 5.7.1807 was released 11/08/2011

[Anatoly (staff)]

StarWind 5.8 Release Notes


Core: Multi-LUN support has been added for non-HA targets.

Deduplication:
- Plug-in has been reworked to support data journaling.
- Snapshots support has been added.
- Replication has been added as an experimental feature.

High availability:
The new plug-in version has been developed. The plug-in ensures:

- Standard raw image files can be used for creating HA devices.
- MS iSCSI transport for sync channel has been substituted by StarWind’s own transport.
- Several network interfaces can be used for synchronization and heartbeat channel.
- Heartbeat channel setting is required. It’s recommended to use a client network as the heartbeat channel. This channel is used for transfer of service messages only, so it doesn’t produce any substantial network traffic.
- Switch partner feature. A new partner node can be assigned to the existing HA device node. The old partner should not be used after switching HA device to the new partner node. Client MPIO connections should be reconfigured to use the path to the new partner instead of the old one.
- Automatic HA device synchronization after the both nodes were down. If the HA device can identify the node that has the most recent and correct data, it brings this node online automatically and synchronizes the other node. If the device cache mode is write-back and at least one node has not been turned off normally (for example, both nodes were down at the same time after power loss), the HA device cannot run the synchronization procedure automatically.
- The new option has been added that allows marking an unsynchronized HA device as synchronized without actual data synchronization. This command can be used in a disaster situation when the both HA nodes failed. Example: When the both nodes are turned on after the failure and you found out that some hardware was damaged on the second node and you are unable to replace/fix the hardware immediately. In this case, you can mark the undamaged node as "synchronized" and continue the working process. As soon as the other node is fixed and returns online, it starts copying (synchronizing) the data.
- The new option has been added for extending the size of an HA device on fly.

Hardware VSS provider for Deduplication and CDP devices: This is now available as a separate download.

StarWindX: COM-object and set of PowerShell commandlets that allow management of the StarWind virtual devices by the third-party scripts and software. This is now available as a separate download.

RAM disk: Serial ID generation algorithm has been changed. Now, serial ID is unique across different machines on the network. You can still add predefined IDs to a configuration file for RAM devices.

SPTI: Buffer alignment parameter is used when checking the device properties during the service initialization.

Backup Plug-in for Hyper-V virtual machines

- Agentless architecture
- VHD archives’ format
- Network Centralized Management
- Single-click backup
- Global Deduplication
- Restore for the entire virtual machine
- Sandbox mode for VM test
- VM cloning

The latest build is 5.8.1889